An evening with Liberace

Yesterday, my friend and I went to see Behind The Candalabra. Before she mentioned it to me, I hadn’t heard of it. When she said it was about Liberace, I still didn’t have that much idea what was coming.

In all honesty, Liberace is a name I’ve heard plenty of times but couldn’t have pinned it down to anything if you’d asked me. Somewhere in my mind, I thought he was connected to music but I also thought he was perhaps a general in the army during the war. I also had a feeling he was an artist. Basically, I had no idea what to expect when going to see this film.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it but I’ll give you the general gist.

A young boy, Scott Thorson, has a chance meeting with Liberace after seeing one of his concerts with a mutual friend. A relationship develops and continues on for many years, despite Liberace’s cover story for the public, that he is engaged to a woman.

The thing that got me thinking in this film was the situation that Scott finds himself in. He is your average Joe. He’d had a difficult upbringing. He was living in foster care at the time. He was only 16 years old. Then he went to see a concert with a friend and suddenly he’s entered this crazy world of money and cars and fur coats and plastic surgery.

O yes, the plastic surgery, I forgot to mention the plastic surgery. The relationship between Liberace and Scott takes a funny turn when Liberace adopts Scott and pays for him to have plastic surgery to look like himself. Yep. (Rob Lowe plays a fantastic role as the plastic surgeon, by the way.)

Imagine you were seeing a concert, of Beyonce perhaps. And by crazy coincidence, you got to see her backstage. And imagine she invited you to lunch at her house the next day. And her house was massive and full of gold things and she wore loads of rings and fur coats and necklaces. And imagine you and Beyonce had a relationship and you started wearing all the fancy fur coats too and had three or four cars. And imagine you became part of her stage act and lived in a world of craziness and money. And you had your face changed through plastic surgery to look like hers.

I mean, it’s crazy talk. But it really happened to an ordinary boy. It’s just incomprehensible, the wackiness of the world that Hollywood stars live in.

So now, I have to read the book. Do you ever get that? You leave the cinema and you’re already downloading the book?

Anyway, people, go and see this film. It’s funny, it’s brilliantly filmed, it’s extravagant and it is a feast for the eyes. The costume designer must have had a party on this set!

A return to Chat

This is long overdue and I apologise to those of you who have been waiting patiently for it. It’s time to review this week’s Chat magazine.

It’s difficult to know where to start really. The cover has got some real gems. Check it out.

‘Fag-butt torture’?! Brilliant. There’s just something really catchy about that. The main problem with this title, though, is not its catchy tag line but the fact that, when you read the story, there’s not a fag butt in sight! They obviously edited that bit out but forgot to tell whoever was getting the front cover ready. There is literally no mention of fag butts in the story. None. And yet the front cover promised me some fag butts! Disappointing. I very rarely read a story unless it contains some fag butts.

Ah. Now this is a good one. When looking for my favourite magazine on the shelf, I spotted this funny, oddly proportioned face and something about cement and knew I’d found Chat. O, the perils of using a dodgy unqualified plastic surgeon.

I love how the inference here is that she arrived in Florida, in the airport or whatever, and she got off the plane, passport in hand, to have a lovely beach holiday. But when she got to passport control they recoiled in horror at her weight, disgusted by the thought of her on their beaches, flaunting her overweight body for all to see and psychologically damaging children for life.

“Too fat for Florida”. That’s what I thought I was going to read. Those Floridians can be harsh, I thought to myself. Poor woman, being told she can’t come in because of her weight.

And then I read the story, which really should have been titled, “I Couldn’t Fasten My Seatbelt On A Ride In Florida And A Man Had To Help Me.” Yeh. That was all. Of course that was all. She just couldn’t fasten her seatbelt on a ride.

At first I didn’t know whether the two things were connected – “Turn your hero into Lego” and “Win a life size statue of your child.” It turns out they are, implying that one’s hero is their child. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that as such, but your average six year old is unlikely to have achieved the things an adult of fifty probably has. I mean they’re barely getting to grips with their times tables. They’re still punching their friends in the playground to settle disputes. And giggling at the word ‘boobs’. Personally, my hero, a man called Clive Stafford Smith, has got a lot more going for him than any child I know.

And yet, I am invited by Chat to turn my hero (my child) into a life sized Lego statue. I mean, really? Really?

Surely by the time you’ve built it, it’s no longer life sized because children grow quickly? And why, why on earth would I want a Lego statue of my child. I already have my actual child. I don’t need a Lego body double.

Check out the Lego family! Now imagine it just chilling in your front room. After the initial novelty of having a Lego family watching TV with you, I imagine it’d be a right pain. And a bit scary if you went downstairs for a glass of water in the night.

Wow, guys. That was just the front cover! I’m going to stop there and let you digest everything that’s been discussed today. Tomorrow we’ll delve inside the magazine to find what treats await us there!

Murder at the Academy Awards! And Donald Duck…

Yesterday’s Getting Excited About Stuff was relatively straight forward = It’s Joan Rivers’ birthday. Get hold of a book by/about Joan Rivers and read it.

Well, there wasn’t one at the library and I thought about walking along to the book shop but I was a bit knackered after my long swim (my legs and arms ache a bit today, I kind of entered a trance and just kept going then realised I’d been in there for absolutely ages!). So I headed home and looked around on Kindle on my phone and found a book by Joan Rivers called Murder at the Academy Awards! (There was also one called Men Are Stupid… And They Like Big Boobs but I thought Murder at the Academy Awards looked better.) Can you imagine anything better than a few hours with your head in a potentially-trashy probably-rubbish book called Murder at the Academy Awards?! After the onslaught of Serious Facts and Textbooks that became my life recently, I have been revelling in the more frivolous side of life. I got stuck in.

It’s told from the point of view of a reporter on the red carpet trying to snatch interviews with A-listers arriving at the Oscars. It’s actually told quite well. I was surprised to read on Wikipedia that Joan has a degree in English Literature so what I was expecting – a loud-mouthed Hello! magazine but longer and with more insults – was not what I got. Of course it’s brash, of course the insults fly (Cameron Diaz is given the what-for for wearing a dress that ‘not even Winona Ryder would shoplift’) but it’s done quite well. Don’t get confused here, I’m not telling you all to run out and buy it because it is a work of literary genius. But it’s a fun read for an afternoon off work.

I’m only half way through so the mystery of how the star of the show dies, a young actress who spends her time in and out of rehab, is yet to be solved. The hilarity of the situation that the main character is now in is entertaining reading. She’s having herself admitted to a rehab clinic with a pretend addiction, so that she can dig around and find out some gossip about how the starlet may have died. And she just lost her dog when taking it to the vet. And her bodyguard loves pantsuits. And she loves plastic surgery. It’s all going on in Murder at the Academy Awards!

And so to today. 9th June. Would you believe it? In 1934, on 9th June, Donald Duck made his debut in The Wise Little Hen! So today, I shall spend some time getting excited about Donald Duck. I’ve read up on him. I know all about him and his rivalry with Mickey Mouse. He gets over it eventually and they are the best of friends. I know all about his career in films and his educational programmes for children. I know that he struggles with his temper. I even know what his sayings are. “What’s the big idea?” is his most used. I also know about his health issues, he’s quite lazy and all his friends think he needs to get some exercise. But one time he knocked a shark out with one punch so he’s still pretty strong, even if he is lazy….

I hope you enjoyed that little fact-onslaught about Donald Duck. I feel we would all benefit a little from knowing more about Donald.

So today I am going to dress as a sailor. Well, not really. I’m just going to wear white trousers and a blue jumper. And say “What’s the big idea?” to people. And maybe I’ll watch The Wise Little Hen if I can find it on Youtube.